As an aid in interpreting the outcome of the 1942 congressional election and subsequent general elections, this paper presents two basic studies that have been found very helpful in connection with the 1940 election. One of these deals with the changes in political sentiment for the country as a whole, as shown by the long-time record of relative strength of the Democratic party in the two-party vote in congressional and presidential elections. From this long-time record it is possible to derive the characteristics of our political tides and an interpretation of the most recent changes as background for forthcoming elections. For example, the Democratic party attained its greatest strength on record in 1936, but in 1938 the tide turned against it, largely because of the 1937–38 business recession. Recovery by 1940 checked the decline.

The second study (in two sections) deals with the basic similarities between the pattern of political behavior for a given series of elections for the country as a whole and the political behavior of most of the states. From the “normal” relationships that can be developed between the national and state experience, it is possible to determine the influence of certain major issues, such as the isolationist and third-term issues in 1940. In that election, the Eastern and Far Western states voted more Democratic and the Midwestern and Great Plains states voted less Democratic than usual. These discrepancies are immediately traceable more to isolationist and anti-third-term sentiment than to any of the other issues.

Often it has been asserted that if the United States had stood by her allies after 1918 and joined the League of Nations, peace in Europe would have been secure. While this overstresses the point, it is certainly true that the lack of unity among the victors, both at Versailles and afterwards, deprived the world of anything like a center of coördination and leadership. Even the Concert of Europe of bygone days could claim greater authority than a League from which five out of seven great powers were either permanently or temporarily absent, and in which the two remaining powers, Britain and France, were rarely in agreement.

In view of this experience, it makes sense to regard continued coöperation between at least some of the important allies of this war, assuming the defeat of Hitler and his partners, as being an essential prerequisite for a more durable peace. If at least the two great English-speaking powers could form between themselves a solid partnership, so it is argued, would not their combined strength and their supremacy of the seas quite naturally attract other nations into their orbit and thus enable them to preserve the order and peace of the world? Their rôle is envisaged as a kind of enlarged replica of that which the British Empire fulfilled with no little success throughout most of the nineteenth century.

Executive Reorganization. In long and highly controversial opinions, the majorities of the Indiana and Louisiana supreme courts invalidated state administrative reorganization plans of a type whose constitutionality might conceivably have been treated as political questions. The Indiana controversy grew out of the repeal, over a Democratic governor's veto, of the Executive-Administrative Act of 1933. In place of an administration consolidated into eight departments, each directly responsible to the governor, the Republican legislative majority substituted an organization of four departments—state, audit and control, treasury, public works and commerce—each headed by a hybrid board composed of the governor and two elective administrative officers, or one administrative officer, the governor, and the lieutenant-governor. Existing tenures were terminated and powers of appointment were expressly given to the respective three-man boards.

Upon adjournment of the legislature, this sweeping “reorganization” was immediately attacked on the grounds that it wrested authority from the governor and unconstitutionally delegated executive power to ministerial officers. Operation of the acts was enjoined in the lower court. On appeal, a divided supreme court declared the repealing statute unconstitutional. The heart of the majority opinion was the syllogism that under the Indiana constitution executive power, “including the administrative,” is vested, not in the executive department, but in the governor; that the appointive function is an exercise of the executive power; and hence only the governor may appoint.

Wings over Europe and the Far East are being spread from what was until last year mere Midwestern field and stream—Willow Run, now the site of the world's largest and most revolutionary bomber plant. Air supremacy for the United Nations may rest upon Henry Ford's adaptation of assembly-line methods from autos to airplanes. B-24 bombers now being flown from the hangars at the bomber plant are casting their shadows over the countryside round about. But months ago, the first shadows of Willow Run lengthened over the neighboring cities and villages. Rural residents are finding themselves in the midst of a metropolitan maëlstrom. Orchards, vineyards, wood-lots, and truck gardens are giving way to highways, trailer camps, and federal housing facilities. Population growth and changing land-use are staring the local urban and rural governments in the face. Immediate need for roads, public health service, zoning, and housing are problems which cut across the paths of national, state, and local authorities.

Among the many problems which the war has thrust upon the United States has been that of the proper treatment of the conscientious objector to compulsory military service. Our record in this regard during the first World War was not one of which a democratic nation could be proud. With the enactment of the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940, reconsideration of the issue was necessary. Now, after almost two years of experience with the administration of the Act, a systematized plan quite unlike that of the past has been formulated and placed in operation.

The experience of recent years has shown that espionage, sabotage, and subversive propaganda have everywhere been preliminary to, and an integral part of, the program of Axis military aggression. That such activity constituted a threat of increasing gravity to the United States was recognized, even prior to our entry into the present war, by the enactment of legislation designed to strengthen our defenses against propagandist and subversive activities of foreign agents and organizations under foreign control, to tighten up the surveillance of aliens, and to make more rigid the requisites for naturalization. Since the United States became an active belligerent, additional measures have been adopted for the control of alien enemies and nationals of Axis origin.

There is little point to speculating at this time upon the historical significance of the resettlement of populations recently carried out in Europe. Yet the mechanics of a transfer of such magnitude are of interest, and a fairly adequate account can now be presented of the return of the Baltic Germans.

On October 15, 1939, Estonia, and on October 30, 1939, Latvia, signed treaties regulating this translocation of presons of German nationality. No agreement was made with Lithuania where, after the loss of Memel, there remained only about 30,000 Germans, mostly peasants.